• Enelow, W., & Goldman, S. (2005). Insider’s Guide to Finding a Job. Indianapolis, IN: JIST.

• Gladwell, M. (2005). Blink! The Power of Thinking without Thinking. New York: Little, Brown.

• Kraft, C. (2004, Nov. 9). Don’t just tell what you did, tell how you did it!. Gladiator newsletter.

• Quintessential Careers: Resume and CV Resources for Job-Seekers

• Ryan, L. (2005, Feb. 22). Multi-story resume, higher profile. Business Week Online.

• Whitcomb, Susan Britton, (2003). Resume Magic. Indianapolis, ID: JIST.

Here are sample story-based resumes and addenda to give you a better idea how to use storytelling in these documents:

• Walter Dietz Story Resume
• Sean Patrick Story Resume Addendum: Leadership Profile
• Wesley Edwards Story Resume
• Zhang Li “Story-Lite” Resume followed by Executive Performance Highlights Addendum
• Mathias Carroll Projects Supplement
• Georgia Lutz Bio Addendum

With some career experts predicting that traditional resumes may be on their way out, readers may question the notion of the storytelling resume. Citing online recruiting expert John Sullivan as well as Allan Schweyer of the Human Capital Institute, Deborah Dib prognosticates that “within a few years most companies who are hiring or recruiting online will use e-profiles in place of the traditional resume. E-profiles allow access to information that is sorted and easy to use.” Dib’s finger is on the pulse of those who predict that paperless recruiting will become the norm. While the resume may disappear from the online job search and morph into new forms and spin-offs, it will still be used for mailing, networking, and interviewing. No matter what form the resume takes, expert wordsmithing will still be required, Dib notes, “to compose keyword-rich online profiles and resume builders, and to develop compelling success stories for interviews.” A focus-group participant agrees, stating that “in the business world, there will always be a time and place when candidates will need a quick, concise, easily accessible summary of their skills. I think technology will continue to streamline the job application process, and resumes will adapt accordingly but never go away completely.”

It’s also just possible that the current business trend toward storytelling will move the resume to a more rather than less narrative form. As businesspeople recognize the power of storytelling and eschew emotionless data, PowerPoint presentations, dry analytical facts, and terse bullet points, they will be drawn to story-based resumes. As A Whole New Mind author Daniel Pink warns, “minimizing the importance of story places you in professional and personal peril.”

Employers and recruiters express a constant concern about finding candidates who are a good fit with their organizations, who will perform, and get results. Given that they fret about the ability to predict candidate performance before hiring, they should welcome information in the resume that helps them to get to know more about the candidate rather than less. In fact, it is not decision-makers’ distaste for rich information that is driving the current trend toward standardized profile forms that enable employers to compare apples to apples; instead, it is the revolution in Internet recruiting and job-hunting which has inundated employers with too many resumes to deal with. But as Pink points out, we have a “hunger for what stories can provide - context enriched by emotion, a deeper understanding of how we fit in and why that matters.”

Even if you’ve used storytelling to describe your accomplishments in your resume, space limitations have likely prevented you from providing much detail. Deborah Wile Dib, a CEO coach with multiple certifications in resume writing and career coaching, is an enthusiastic champion of the concept of resume addenda. Noting that these story-based addenda are “a good read,” she gives them a variety of titles, such as “Critical Leadership Initiatives,” “Marketing Milestones,” “Performance Milestones,” “Key Engagements” (for a consultant), “Career Success and Distinctions,” and “Major Campaigns.” Dib encourages clients to identify their “career-defining accomplishments” and then rank-order the top five that align best with the job-seeker’s targeted employers. For Dib, most accomplishments can be summed up in the phrase “accomplished solutions provider.” The employer, Dib notes, is primarily interested in whether the candidate can solve problems and make/save money. The addendum supplies information - that the more concise resume can’t accomplish - about the challenge the candidate faced and the process used to achieve the result, Dib says. To enhance the storytelling power of her resumes and addenda, Dib sometimes even breaks the cardinal resume rule against using the pronoun “I” in her documents. Also touting the idea of the resume addendum is well-known resume writer and career author Louise Kursmark, who refers to these addenda as “ROI documents,” replete with stories that illustrate the Return on Investment the employer will gain in hiring the candidate. Kursmark’s own special twist on the resume addendum is the Job Proposal, which tells a future story of what the candidate can do for the employer. The proposal presents the candidate’s understanding of the employer’s challenge, a section entitled “My Value” that explains how the candidate is the most qualified person to meet the challenge, and offers a “Proposed Solution.”

Dib cautions that not everyone involved in the hiring process likes resume addenda, and my PhD research bears out that caution. But as long as the employer also has your “story lite” resume, he or she can choose whether or not to review the addendum. Some recruiters in the focus-group research liked the option of being able to obtain additional information from addenda. One participant said, “I like addenda because they don’t get in my way, but if I choose to delve deeper when presenting to a hiring manager, the info is there.”

The addendum can also make an excellent artifact for your career portfolio, as described in the upcoming Chapter 6.

• Boosted sales rate by 200 percent in first year and 400 percent over five years, successfully capturing majority of engineering specification market.
• Revived branch image, upgraded technology and equipment, and re-established company as industry leader by increasing sales dramatically.
• Achieved 95 percent spend capture, 35 percent system operating and maintenance cost reduction, increased order visibility and leverage position, and enhanced supplier relationship management by executing successful integration of business units’ procurement and payables systems and processes.
• Reduced annual consulting costs by $1.4M, streamlined development processes, facilitated rapid turnaround of customer requests, and enhanced internal application-development and application-support capabilities by developing and executing plan to in-source numerous key IT functions.
• Achieved 25 percent call-back rate, 30 percent sales increase, and a reopened revenue stream by executing direct-mail initiative to contact dormant customers to provide name recognition reminder and publish service-option details.
• Saved company $13.75 million - $1.75 million in first year and $4 million annually for three consecutive years - by conceiving, designing, and strategizing to bring branch computer maintenance in-house.
• Saved weeks in project time by instituting structured project-management methodology.
• Increased recoveries from less than 2 percent of paid, to 5.7 percent of paid, resulting in $39.6 million in increased recoverables, by creating “Third Party Recovery Recognition Templates.”
• Reduced customer requests from 500 to 12 within three months by designing and implementing centralized customer task-tracking system.
• Reduced errors, saved time, achieved nearly a 100-percent paperless environment, and saved money by implementing central Web-based database that houses all client data, realizing remarkable return on equipment investment in less than a year.

Presenting your accomplishments in your resume represents a case where it’s OK, indeed desirable, to give away the end of the story first. Tell the Result (R) of your Action (A) first so it catches the employer’s attention. Then, ideally, describe the Situation (S), Problem (P), or Challenge (C) that your Action addressed. Quantify wherever possible.

Note in these examples from diverse resumes that, because of resume space limitations and employers’ preference for conciseness, the Situation, Problem, or Challenge is not always described:

• Produced sales growth from $50K in backlog to more than $31 million in backlog in three years by building high-performance, multifunctional/multi-discipline, sales team comprising professionals from multiple departments.
• Deflected 50 percent increase in electricity costs by designing/installing power factor correction systems.
• Reduced water usage by 80 percent by developing new cooling water temperature control system.
• Led national expansion of single-serve potato chip product — building US volume +33% — by utilizing US volume projections, international test market demands, and available capacity.
• Increased revenue by recruiting, training, and organizing efficient contract staff capable of faster processing time that optimized sales representatives’ performance.
• Began employment as fax runner whose superiors recognized exemplary professional skills and unsurpassed work ethic; promoted to administrative assistant, and promoted again to senior administrative assistant within a year.
• Achieved 36 percent rating increase in customer survey scores by creating and implementing two new staff training programs that heightened levels of guest satisfaction.
• Increased sales revenue by 15 million in one year by assembling dynamic marketing team, coaching team members, and implementing highly effective marketing strategy.
• Reduced unnecessary book purchases by developing Excel spreadsheet book inventory.
• Raised $250K in one evening by coordinating 85 volunteers for school auction/dinner and through sales of 800 silent and 40 live-auction items.
• Facilitated 55 percent increase in customer satisfaction and 50 percent increase in employee job satisfaction by flattening hierarchy from 10 functional areas to just two, guiding employees to redefine their jobs, creating efficient work processes, eliminating redundancies, and eradicating paperwork in organization formerly unresponsive to clients as well as inefficient, bureaucratic, and apathetic.

An important technique to enable your reader to interpret your Summary/Profile section as a story is to make it parallel, as though each bullet point is completing the same sentence. This kind of narrative flow helps readability enormously. Imagine that each Summary/Profile bullet point answers the question, “Who are you, and what can you do for our organization?” and finishes an unstated but understood sentence that begins: “I am a(n)…”

Let’s see how this formula works in practice:

• [I am a] Seasoned systems analyst with strong commitment to time and resource budgets, new-business development, strategic planning, innovation, technology trends, customer-service needs, and close collaboration with sales and marketing during development.
• [I am a] Competent problem-solver who resolved sales and shipping issues by creating internal customer-care system and saving 20 percent on shipping; researched and delivered Web conferencing service for sales that saved 30 percent of travel budgets.
• [I am a] Visionary innovator who partnered with another programmer to create pioneering language-learning software that earned national attention; served as lead analyst for revolutionary legal document generating and tracking product.
• [I am a] Technical guru who provided direct support for successful million-dollar negotiation with major print vendor and completed many successful major conversions from mainframe to mini-computer systems.
• [I am a] Strong communicator who was voted best specification writer - with least number of re-writes - by programmers and their managers.

You’ll note that the story-based grammatical structure of these parallel bullet points goes like this: [Adjective] [noun] [connecting words] [phrase describing skill/strength/expertise] [supported by quote, example, numbers]

• Highly motivated sales professional with excellent communications and presentation skills as well as a reputation for instantly developing rapport that produces immediate sales results while paving the way for future sales successes.
• Goal-driven IT operations and technical-support management professional with 15+ years of experience and commitment to delivering high-quality technical service and support to multiple IT customers concurrently.
• Master’s-level professional known for strong analytical and quantitative skills and applying sound research methodologies to assess needs, identify alternatives, and recommend strategies that facilitate optimal healthcare outcomes.
• Dedicated health and education professional who is uniquely qualified to deliver outside-the-box accomplishments in pharmaceutical sales through exceptional ability to synthesize and disseminate product knowledge and contribute immediately to your bottom line.
• Efficiency-driven call-center professional who upholds highest accuracy performance standards and operational effectiveness through genuine talent for motivational, interpersonal teaching and mentoring.
• Accomplished accounting professional and licensed CPA with extensive experience in developing and implementing highly efficient accounting systems that deliver accurate reporting and ensure compliance with established control policies and procedures.
• Accomplished QA professional with 15+ years of progressive experience and proven record of significant, successful contribution in wide range of organizations that previously had no quality standards or programs in place.
• Dynamic B2B/B2C technology marketing executive with exemplary career record of bringing products to market, precisely targeting consumer demographic while maximizing adoption and profitability.
• Conscientious direct caregiver who provides meticulous, fully attentive, individualized nursing care to meet complex array of patient needs by employing nursing process methodology including assessment, planning, implementation, and evaluation.
• Dynamic professional with strong commitment to women’s sports and proven track record as both competitor and event organizer.
• Highly proficient, multi-faceted professional with demonstrated ability to identify and define needs, formulate solutions, direct and supervise multiple participants, and capably juggle and effectively manage several priorities simultaneously.

• Dynamic MBA-level professional with more than seven years of experience in successful leadership of business and organizational turnarounds that involve multiple, complex dynamics and cross disciplines and management levels.
• PhD-level leader, change agent, and social activist who has developed broad range of programs and procedures that yielded cost effectiveness and maximum utilization of resources and accountability.
• Dynamic performer with background of achievement and success in entrepreneurial and business-development roles that have catapulted bottom-line revenues.
• Multi-faceted change-agent with significant human-resources experience who applies expertise in cross-functional process improvement to achieve meaningful organizational change.
• Entrepreneurial, outside-the-box, critical thinker with strong quantitative and research skills, functional IT skillset, and enthusiasm to deliver on front-line globalization issues.
• Goal-driven achiever with strong organization skills who performs as both versatile individual and team player with ability to quickly assess, comprehend, and manage customer relations while upholding company values.
• Accomplished project-management professional with more than 15 years of experience in capably and creatively delivering operating solutions through proficiencies in business analysis, problem-solving, process improvement, and software development.
• Self-motivated professional with strong financial skills who expertly manages multiple deadlined tasks, including accurate processing and reporting accounts payable/receivable, reconciliations, and payroll.
• Outgoing customer-service professional known for outstanding interpersonal, organizational, and prioritization skills, as well as people-management know-how that consistently elicits positive interaction with internal and external clientele.

Begin your Summary/Profile section with a bullet point that tells the story of your professional identity in a nutshell. It’s the most important bullet point because it puts you into focus, characterizes who you are, and tells the story of what you can contribute. If the reader should happen to read no further in your Summary/Profile section, he or she should at least have a sense of your essence from this first bullet point.